News Digest

Saturday

Oct 6, 2012 at 6:00 AM

BEIRUT — Syrian warplanes and artillery pounded the central city of Homs on Friday, subjecting the rebel stronghold to its heaviest bombardment in months, activists said. The reported tank and mortar shelling as well as airstrikes come alongside a push by government force on another front, the embattled northern city of Aleppo. The stepped-up pace of government attacks on Syrian cities suggests that the Damascus regime’s forces have not been distracted by escalating tensions with its northern neighbor, Turkey. Ankara’s parliament on Thursday authorized cross-border military operations after a Syrian shell killed five civilians in Turkish territory the day before.

Turkish troops, meanwhile, fired at Syria for the second straight day, responding to another mortar shell from Syria that struck Turkish territory, state-run media said. The shelling came hours after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Syria not to test Turkey’s patience.

LIMA, Peru — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta lashed back at Afghan President Hamid Karzai Friday, saying the Afghan leader should say thank you now and then to the allied forces who are fighting and dying there, rather than criticizing them.

Panetta was responding to Karzai’s complaints Thursday that the U.S. is failing to go after militants based in Pakistan, and instead is concentrating on the insurgents in Afghanistan.

“We have made progress in Afghanistan because there are men and women in uniform who have been willing to fight and die for Afghanistan’s sovereignty,” Panetta snapped, as he spoke with reporters traveling with him to South America.

MEXICO CITY — Mexican archaeologists said Friday they uncovered the largest number of skulls ever found in one offering at the most sacred temple of the Aztec empire dating back more than 500 years.

The finding reveals new ways the pre-Columbian civilization used skulls in rituals at Mexico City’s Templo Mayor, experts said. That’s where the most important Aztec ceremonies took place between 1325 until the Spanish conquest in 1521.

The 50 skulls were found at one sacrificial stone. Five were buried under the stone, and each had holes on both sides — signaling they were hung on a skull rack.

Archaeologists believe the skulls were those of women and men between 20 and 35 years old.

ISLAMABAD — A group of American anti-war activists are in Pakistan to join a march into the country’s tribal belt to protest U.S. drone strikes in the rugged northwest territory. Their presence has energized organizers behind the protest but also added to concerns that Islamist militants will target the weekend event.

The two-day march — in reality a long convoy — is to be led by Imran Khan, the former cricket star-turned-politician who has become a top critic of the American drone strikes in Pakistan.

It is to start Saturday in Islamabad and end in a town in South Waziristan, a tribal region that has been a major focus of drone strikes as well as the scene of a Pakistani army offensive against militants.

Khan, like many Pakistanis, alleges that the drone strikes have killed large numbers of innocent civilians and terrorized the tribes living along the Afghan border.